1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in particular to the field of feeding ammunition to a firearm and particularly to a flexible chute to guide a flexible ammunition belt from an ammunition box to a firearm.
This chute is intended to be attached on the one hand near a cartridge box and on the other hand at the inlet of the feeding chute of the weapon; by design, it has the necessary and sufficient flexibility in bending and in torsion to allow the movements of the weapon without imparting more deformations to the belt than those required for its proper operation.
2. Description of Related Art
In many cases, the gun numbers of small-caliber machine-guns, up to 12.7 mm, feed their weapon with an ammunition box, or even without ammunition box, they then have at their disposal only 100 or 200 shots available that they must watch over during the shot so as to avoid any inopportune hooking before inserting the ammunition, which could block the weapon or damage its proper operation.
Today, in particular for new weapons or new weapon systems, there are flexible and metal ammunition chutes. These chutes are constituted by a series of component assemblies mounted one behind the other, so as to form successive joints and constitute a chute with a length sufficient to link an ammunition box and a weapon to thereby ensure the ammunition feeding of the weapon. These devices have many disadvantages such as their complexity of production, the need for a significant maintenance to maintain the joints in a proper state.
To overcome these disadvantages, U.S. Pat. No. 3,435,937 discloses a chute with a partially rectangular cross-section comprising a large longitudinal groove on one of its long sides and formed by a succession of identical sections, two successive sections being linked by lateral wall portions on each of the lateral faces of the short sides thereof. Thus, two half-blind grooves arranged in a same plane divide two successive sections and the chute comprises n assemblies of two half-blind grooves arranged in parallel planes and allow some flexibility of the chute, the longitudinal groove also participating in the flexibility of the chute, as indicated in the description relating to FIG. 2 of said patent.
“Lateral wall portion” is intended to mean that these lateral wall portions do not link the small lateral sides on their entire length, but only on a portion of the latter.
However, such a chute shows a flexibility only in a plane, which significantly restricts its use.